My Christmas Present to Me

I was reading about diabetes the other day and I got really scared.

Did you know that diabetes:
- is the most frequent cause of non-traumatic lower limb amputations.
- decreases average life expectancy by 15 years.
- is the leading cause of death by disease in Canada.
- is the leading cause of adult blindness.
- is the single leading cause of kidney failure.

I have always had the assumption that diabetes can be managed through diet and exercise, and I guess this is still true, but wow... Reading those statistics blew me away and left me feeling as if my stomach had caved in. I have been doing a really good job of watching my sugar just through watching what I eat, but I decided that what I really need to do is get back into exercising. I actually decided this long ago, over and over again and yet I have only gone three times all year*. I figured I needed some extra motivation. So on Boxing Day I went out and got myself a present, seen here to the right.

* I am kinda scared to go to the gym these days because I feel out of place in either the men's or women's change room. Deanne tells me the fear is worse than actually doing it, but now that I actually own a treadmill even if I am too scared to go I can still get in some exercise.
* I was reading on my ex-friend Rob's blog how he has stopped going to the gym because he saw my car there three times in a row. Like I said, I have only gone three times all year, and even though I am followed around by a swirling vortex of coincidence(tm) I find it highly unlikely he managed to show up on the same three days I was there. I find it so amusing that he lies to himself on his own blog.